Comments [166]

Magdalena Ball

Ah, missed the deadline. Never mind. This one is for Patti Smith.

Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing

electricity pouring from veins and micyou sangtransformation of wastebrought the house downbabble and gibberishwhat kid would know betterbesideswe’re still singingplasma vaporizing garbagegasificationlovely green buzzwordsfeel good against the tongue

arc of superheated plasmabetter than rock and rollhigh-voltage currentstrash to oilhey howe’ve always excelled in wastehere in the 21st centurypretentious no longerjust prescientreadyto sing on

An early tripOh and whata mind benderOh your pena senderTo higher planesFor one thirteento splendorOpening centurieserasing timeSeeing eternityin every lineThe Word is audibleand It is writHis voice I heardthru Robert Fripp

After sliding down a Rainbow into Sabbath’s blacken’d doom – His canticles brought fellowship into my lonesome room.Tunes that built a brotherhood of rhapsodic ecstasy – He flashed the El Cornuto from a poster down at me.A goetic Pan-orama his anthems did reveal,To inspire the budding aspirant to break Hermetic seal.The harmony of Wishing Well by hearing ears was heard – Knowing few can find the Path for Lonely is the Word.While the tragic Holy Diver flounder’d lost in stormy sea,His refrains had power to set Philosophic free.To the poet in myself that wander’d lost in murky bog – The magic in his verses let the Sun shine through the fog.But now I have grown older and more wise in sophistry,And as we grow so do our tastes in multiplicity.They always said I would outgrow my metallic roots – But if roots are strong they give birth to new and reaching shoots.Shoots that climb relentlessly in yearning for the Sun,Great Trees which spread their branches that squirrelish thoughts may run.Though Nature built his stature not much over five feet tall,His music brought forth vet’ran Trees that bring cool shade to all.With hymns of witchery and wizards – and burning dragon’s breath,This Dio became a dauntless god that died heroic death.

I coveted the (wise) crack in your Westchesterwhine on the bootleg tape your brother Andymade (at our boarding school in Switzerland)long before I saw you live at The Bottom Line,The Quiet Knight, raising your leg like a peeing dogin time to your waggling tongue—demented metro-nome. Ticking off swimming pools, ties and trains,cummerbunds, ham, you balls-ally sang that unspeak-able word—my word—“richer.”

Early show, late, early/late, I lauded you,Loudon III, holy trinity, my doppelganger,Me-myself-and-I followed you across this countryfrom club (country club!) to dingy club—5 in the audience, 4 (magic number), 3, and oneof those numbers was always me. (Why did wenever marry? You had kids with other crazy women…)

Loudon Wainwright, third in a line of wail-fulwagon-builders (station wagons?), you racedyour triumphal airs into the on-coming rock lane.LOUD-ON! With un-flagging self-disdain,sad sarcasm (like me) you made yourselfugly—off with high cheekbones—free!Your Brooks Brothers shirts made me hurt.

And here I sit with my friend the cat(My high school quote is from that song—I told you at The Lion’s Head, the nightof my mother’s funeral, you happened tobe dining alone at the table next to my family.(So many ties.)

Whenever the music finds me, the wheels on a Peterbilt truck roar by; a lonesome stretch of asphalt appears, it Paints its way around the curve, slapping downThe fogline, rattling the gravel where two pairsOf jeans stand waiting, hip to hip, with nothing left to lose.

Back then, it all fit in a backpack, whatever you couldCarry, and life became a desperate race toward more, a carTo move what you could find, a job, the house, speakers and CD’s,Audible frequencies measuring what was lost, the sound ofHer desperate, scratchy voice remembering a better time.

Stocks have tumbled, debris washed out to septic seas.A career, the home and love all gone, like she is,No flames of midnight fires, no howling in a moonlight moment now.But strangely, back on the road it’s better, waiting in the rain there,Singing the song as the world drives by, waving the sign, to Freedom.

When the crowd began to swallow usthere was no time for comparison. No angry ocean. No Beatlemania. The Who had yet to bear witnessto death in Cincinnati.

Doors open. In seconds, it isa human autoclave, heat, pressureteenage giggle-screams, full circles around us, we aresqueezedblanketed in panicand passionmany bodies, one drunk giant My wallet and shoe tugging, then tumbling beyond the swells and goneDenise losing breath, slipping, a lost doll down.Rollercoaster and Rotunda, we’d thought – another day for you - as we’d waited, determined, in the oppression of afternoon sunon the Six Flags stadium gate first in line, first concert, for our collective first loveNow guards’ hands lift us straight up by thin child’s wristsSomehow, up and over the death crush where there is airfor ten-year-olds.

Later when we met back up with Dad and Uncle LouI wobbled and hopped, a shoeless pelican.Between wet-faced sobs, I managed,“Dad! We saw him! I love him!”Not only did we survive.Andy, we had lived glory.

1980

our battlesaw white kids screech on heels and sneakersat the first note of “Flashlight” or “We Are Family”Plant themselves on wood slat bleachers, feigning disgust.Black kids sneered, sidelined While The Cars reversed the dance flood tide. Those of us who moved to anything, everythingStill feel coarse skin threads beneath our clothessternum to pubis casual vivisectionThe prize for refusing to choose. The scars of high school dancesleave few unmarked.

Three brothers, above all, broke apart the rigiddividers, rock vs. disco rally powerless against the greater of movements.Barry, Maurice, and Robin made infectious proclamation:“You Should Be Dancin’… Yeah”And yeah… we did.

I danced. I wrote their nameson science book pages.I liked the dance, loved the deeper, oldertruths, dark stories of New York Mining Disasterwavering I Started a Joke mystery.Be Tender With My Love, I could well ask,fragile in-my-room moments, listening, finding voice.This was the secret, sacred place of chills and harmony.

1988

Students formed the usual lines. I handed three pennies and a stamp back for each quarter.Mary’s booming Caribbean voicewith me behind the campus post office counter,a quiet comfort that morning.The man on the radio said“Andy Gibb has died.”Another radio jock snickered:“One down, three to go.”Lost in the back, delivering no letters my tears fell in silenceI recalled his beautyShadow DancingIn those years when my mind awakened,when full-on wantingbloomed from paper doll desire.

Everything old is young again, and lookOn the TV, there's old Neil Young, againOnstage with Pearl Jam, pounding through that epicAnthem every teenage garage band plays. We’ve discovered he wears the same flannel,Has had the same unruly hair since ’72.His filled out six foot six inch frame stalks the stage End to end like one of Sendak's wild things,Gnashing his terrible teeth, while Vedder smashes his microphone stand again and again.Neil is a broken clock. No, we sleep ‘til noonAnd he wrestles the chimes of midnight from his beat up black Les Paul.

May I compare you to an Albert Einstein?You are more alive and more literary!And when it comes to the relatively fine lineBetween Art and Science, you straddle it with commentaryThat proves Albert's maxim, "ImaginationIs more important than knowledge"...'though, e'er & anon,You're well-endowed with both, to balance the equation,As you write unsolemn columns, not unlike the Parthenon;It's mostly cracked-up, as are my mental stratumsWhen I read your hilar'ty for all subjects 'neath the sun,Including what makes us tick: philosophy! and atoms?You show us: Everything is Relative, especially when we're having fun! As for Albert's favorite maxim, " E=mc,squared," That's a recipe for Humor, condensed, but not impaired!

On the radio Dave Barry saidHe's in a BAND of the "Grateful Read".And he writes no columns, only books.Either way, Dave rocks & cooks!

His motto: " My column? Nevermore!"Yet the deadlines still are there,So Dave keeps going with the chore Of not writing columns & doesn't careWho thinks the paper's trite & bareBecause his columns are not there.Advice to you on your way to the bookstore:Find his columns, ancient, hardcore...Quoth the raven, "Evermore!"

As one of humanity's humorous sagesDave's written books for kids of all ages...With more on the way,He has lots to say,Making it fun to turn the pages.

For whatever subjects dwell in your mind,And for even the few that don't fit,Dave adds his wit that doesn't unwind,Imagination that just won't quit!

If you care to travel to Venus or Mars,Or wherever else you may roam:Through CyberSpace all the way to the stars,Through the Black Holes known as HOME...

I'm sad I never knew how to cry for you.The day the cassette tape was passed to melike secret instructions, my hair stood on end.This was The One we'd been waiting for all along.I blew out my woofers two days later competingwith my upstairs neighbor: "Negative Creep" versus"Knights in White Satin." Speakers could always bereplaced. But no replacing the source of the noise.

On a foggy night in February I couldn't persuadeany of my friends to join me at the bar. I went aloneand watched you reconstruct the air before my eyes.As I sensed my soul actually lifted from my body, headingfor the ceiling, I suddenly understood your band's namewas no joke. No wonder you couldn't keep your ownsoul tethered to the planet. You were conjuring thatnearly every night, and did it for me for only six dollars.

Another album later and somehow the secret got out.The One we'd been waiting for all along was here. Onewho thought it was his gift that made him suffer. Onewho regularly beat a guitar to death to expiate the sin.The drum kit too was not immune to this wrath. In truthI expected you to go, soon, but impaled upon a high hat.So when I got the phone call about you and the shotgun,the shock felt small. What you stole was immeasurable,

incomplete, a favorite part of me. You murdered my hope.Your music was candy, and food, and poison. Yet the messageseemed to somehow promise the handshake of a compadre.I wanted to tell you that night at the bar what famous friendswe could be. But we both hid behind our hair. I'll never dothat again. Now I rush to tell everyone how they've changedme and made me. Maybe it matters. But we all lost The One.And for what you took, I'll never figure out how to cry for you.

[in memoriam Kurt Cobain] ["This is out of our reach and it's grown."]

A waterfall is unafraid of her deepest beauty, and neither is she. She is the ultimate nymph – unafraid of her own water - she dips her feet in, knowing that cold truths warm up like crisp mornings melt into summer days. She dives in, trusting the letters of songs weave themselves into a blanket, ready for her on the other side. She swims in the deep end of course, her arms knowing the ritual of the planet, and her legs unafraid to cause a scene anyway.

She walks and her feet make a pattern in the color green, marking the earth with brightness. With her music at my ready, my poems are delighted to tear out from their holding area, and play like a child in open yards and on the tops of roofs. My courage has found her sister, and if I saw Dido tomorrow, I’d raise my hand, catch her songs from the air where she placed them, and give them back to her - “I Want to Thank You”

Five. During nap time, while the teacher was out, my three best friends pulled up their dresses and pulled down their tights, to show David McFaddentheir panties. I wanted to. I envied them, until Mrs. Esterbrook came back early and caught them with their tights around their ankles. Then all the girls cried, suddenly too young and helpless to pull them back up.

Eight. My best friend Trish, blonde, the shade that makes eyebrows invisible, explained to me, no longer blonde, that boys would always like her better. Boys liked blondes. In the comics Archie liked Veronica more than Betty, but that was an exception: Veronica was rich.

Eleven. I was in love with Phil Volk, the bass player of Paul Revere and the Raiders. I would be walking around the block, as I did every day at sunset, when Phil Volk, lost, would drive by and ask for directions. My family would be on vacation in Florida, and Phil Volk would be staying in the same motel. I would be in New York City with my parents. They would have left me to spend the day at the Museum of Natural History, and there, in the dimly lit hall of dioramas, in front of the rare white Bengal tiger, would be Phil Volk.

Twelve. Paul Revere and the Raiders were regulars on Dick Clark’s Where the Action Is, which I watched every afternoon. One day, an hour before the show, I found red spots on my underpants. My mother had explained menstruation, but she had forgotten to say how often it happened. I assumed it was all the time. I looked at the spots and thought, from now on I’ll bleed. When the show came on I was embarrassed to look at Phil Volk. I was embarrassed even to think his name. I stared at the women, the dancers in boots and miniskirts, and thought: All of them are bleeding. And all women know this, and all men know it about them.

2. Start from the beginning. When I first heard Jewels and Vincent Vega that was like a double-barrel pumped twice, then a shotgun blast to the chest. I coughed up attention. This was one bad motherfucker.

4. You were hit? With blaring surfer rock, A cheap yellow mug with premium coffee, charming reprobates. They all exploded off the screen. It was sick, Jackson Pollack in full effect, homie.

3. Why were you there in the first place? I wanted to see blood, guts and glory. Sounds like you did? I got an ultra-violence revival, plus blood work and glory guts.

5. Any last words? This place is a Hell of a world. We retreat to redeem ourselves. We zombie out on technology. We throw ourselves at our jobs. We fade away with spirits and pharmaceuticals. But hey… Rake your Zen Garden, I'll walk the labyrinth of Pulp Fiction.

Where has my love gone?How can I go on?It seems dear love has gone away

Where is my spirit?I’m nowhere near it.Oh yes, my love has gone astray…

II

The sun has reached its zenith this hot, summer afternoon.High above the ranch houses and quiet streets, a Pan Am 727 glides effortlessly eastwardinto clumps of clouds moving westward in a hurry.Looking upward, Janet Caldwell, age eighteen,studies the busy skies as if it were her future, reclining on a chaise lounge positionedto directly face the sun on the side yard lawn.Oiled slick and deeply tanned, a black, one-piece bathing suit highlights her taut dancer’s figure,and distinguishes a splotch of a beauty markon her left thigh. Long, black hair with a hint of tinsel flows over her bare shoulders. Her white Scottish Terrier, “Shorty” sleeps by her badly calloused feet.The ice has all but melted in a tall glass ofdiet cola placed awkwardly in the grass beside her.A paperback lies open, splayed down on her lap. Romeo and Juliet.Tall hemlocks conceal her from the rest of suburbia.The glass, sliding doors leading to the living room are open.A vinyl LP record plays on the stereo inside.Stevie Wonder. Blame it on the Sun.The music drifts outside, floating on the heavy, warm air.She embraces the moment, the sunlight, the heat, listening to the music never so relaxed and oh, so young, believing that life is truly wonderful in August, 1972.

Travis Bickel stared at the screenwhile couples in black & white slumpedto a dirgeLoss and longing reifiedand later in search of an author I drifted.

It was an unusual choicefor a wedding songbut no one knew me very well and no one listenedI was late for the sky then I am nowWeary and informed young Mr. Browne in the backgroundAnd just out of reach.

This is a repost to address a little grammar problem, hope that doesn't ruffle any feathers.

I'll leave the artist to the end, try to guess while you're reading.

A daily minstrel, whose lyrics wash over me,coating me like the breath of a locomotive.My body stumbles drunkenly with you,cross-eyed in wonder, drawing rattled breath.

I follow as you lead, down strange avenuesto Budapest, Moscow, Berlin, and Montserrat.To Panama and Alaska, and the wild acres of the wood;to the northern sea, and the sands of summer.

We meet with the muses, and dance in their halls.Waltz with the Warchild, Quickstep with the Quizz Kid,Bungle with a Black Mamba, March with the Mad Scientistuntil we collapse with fatigue, bending like a willow.

I’m caught in your lyrical slipstream,be it poignantly political or succinctly surrealistic.The choices are daunting; your portfolio a bazaar.Finally a match, I’ll be singing all day.

I am strung along, dangling with youas you perch yourself, balanced on one foot.Proficiency matched only by an unassuming grace.Silver in hand, visceral, primal, incontestable.

For Ian Anderson, front man of Jethro Tull. One of the great under-appreciated artists of rock and roll.

A daily minstrel, whose lyrics wash over me,coating me like the breath of a locomotive.My body stumbles drunkenly with you,cross-eyed in wonder, drawing rattled breath.

I follow as you lead, down strange avenuesto Budapest, Moscow, Berlin, and Montserrat.To Panama and Alaska, and the wild acres of the wood;to the northern sea, and the sands of summer.

We meet with the muses, and dance in their halls.Waltz with the Warchild, Quickstep with the Quizz Kid,Bungle with a Black Mamba, March with the Mad Scientistuntil we collapse with fatigue, bending like a willow.

I’m caught in your lyrical slipstream,be it poignantly political or succinctly surrealistic.The choices are daunting; your portfolio a bazaar.Finally a match, I’ll be singing all day.

I am strung along, dangling with youas you perch yourself, balanced on one knee.Proficiency matched only by an unassuming grace.Silver in hand, visceral, primal, incontestable.

For Ian Anderson, front man of Jethro Tull. One of the great under-appreciated artists of rock and roll.

i've been followingMr. Bad Examplesetting a few of my owncutting my teethand my loverscovering my empty-handed heartwith dirges and dancesflirting with the darkand Deathlaughing all the while, shoutingfrom carsfrom windowsat you, at herat themthe ones that stillhaven't gotten the jokechoking down lifelike it's freethe ones that stillrecoil from the acerbicthe absurdthe word made fleshonly by tasting the fleshof the ones we lovespitting it outor swallow itit's your choiceit was his voice that told youit told me in a growli first heard the hollow hallelujah resonanttunnel of a toned howlfrom my father and his tapesit was then i found my wayand later as i stood in my wild agei heard from my fatherdon't do as some Excitable Boy dodo what the preacher man sayso i scoffed becauseby then i knew nothingwas pretty at alland heaven was indifferentnow i howlat the moon andride and ride and ride andbeat out that loud tattooproclaiming to allthe Gospel According to Warren

JT steps out of the studio backwardshe slides in a borrowed slipshod softshoe(from MJ) he dizzies his hip shift & doffs his capwhich may or may not be a prop. From the doorwayTimbaland arms-crossed head-nodsbubbling his best Quincy Jones.They skip down the street for tacos.Justin shows Timbo his phonecracking up, he is crying on Punk'd from his palmor decked all in denim with that damn BS.

Justin, how could anyone love you more than Iwho have been won over from adolescent spiteby the irrefutable humors of your unlikely funk?How has your dumb stubble charmed me sopast insincere t-shirts to join in the joyous linksof your shimmering cyclical falsetto soul?

The sixties were dying.The hope of revolution swept away by contagion, Diluting the innocence of self-interest.And I had only just arrived, And it was all nothing at all.Just like my parents said,They were lazy degenerates,They were self-absorbed ingrates,Just like me.And they were right. And they were wrong.Just like me.And there you were,Dead on the same television you had once graced with ease,Strangled by your own degenerate self-interest.Was it acting that killed you?Like so many others raised in a family of stars?Or just stupid unfortunate consequence?Because,That role you stumbled upon as revolution became indulgence,Inspired my years of meditation.How strange the impetus of enlightenment. And, grasshopper, it was supposed to be Bruce Lee.At times my mind so clear, at times so muddied.Just like you.

He the beard-maskedFrightened childEscapes being eatenBy us his audience

Only by thumping usUnawaresAnd running away

My teenage idols were John Coltrane, Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk who is the subject of this poem. The poem is an impression of one of Monk's Carnegie Hall concerts with a big band in which he left the stage early with no explanation. It was originally written around 1967 and reconstructed here.

The matted down grass beneath our worn out soles.Your two lips moving- oozing out phrases that I do not hear.Everything is drown out by the hum of bodies in my ear.Anticipation.The empty stage yearns for a hero to hold.

When the first song begins, nothing else matters.No one else exists,Except me,and the melody.Thousands of bodies before me rise and fall to the beat of the drum.Close your eyes and listen, Listen, Listen,Those rich chords that give music life fill me up and leak out of every scar.

Nothing else matters at this moment.

The language they speak is in a tongue I do not know. One of six bars,Treble clefs,And black ink on Saturday nights with the Band-But I understand.

When the first stanza of their performance wanes, Gerard begins his talk about peace.He speaks the words of maxim.Stay strong.Stay alive.Stay true to yourself.Stay ugly.

They speak to my soul, and She learns quickly.

drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip,the salty sweet tears roll the blood runs redfrom my auburn eyes from the canyons i carve in my wrist My God... "My God..." i whisper what he has done, what have i done?he has changed me, things have changed in me,for the better. for the worst.the next song begins-- the radio sings--

Welcome to the Black Parade. For the five minutes they play, I sing, I scream I cry, I know every last word, Every breath they take, Everything leaves me except the every resonant chords in my throat. Until this very moment I have never felt so alive. The scars fade away to nothing, The tears of many a broken battle vanish. They have saved me from self destruction.

I think of Springsteen,but Guthrie's bearing down on me. I'm covered in grease and grime Spurned by that girl Lazy Spring rain drowned out by speeding cars and drunks and thunder

I can't picture the linebetween misery- meted out by masquerades in the moonlight and men mired in the right & wrong of honest thoughts, thrown at those powers that wrought pain upon faces I'll never see, never name, but know only as downtrodden They that had songs & souls that built roads, worked on and on until some battle struck them down or fought on to give another story told a tale their children held in union halls through lay-offs and even in dark rooms of heat and whispers where my generation would be conceived -and ecstasy. I can't pretend to knowWhat glory and pride is bestowed upon thesethat have held the heart of Americain their own mortal hands.

I know, I have onlywhat those hands have shown mehope for a homelandlove for a lonely man

"Strummer"Police and Thieves Stride from my radioInstantly energizing and destroying passivityI rise and know that I must act on what I need3 chords and and an attitude gave that to meI haven't looked back

FOR YOU(For Bruce Springsteen - written in 1975 when he played the Georgetown University gym, just before he hit the big time. I brought this with me to give him.)

You slinked onto the stage like a tomcat looking for a feline in heatReached for the mike like you found herAnd whispered the first strand of sweet nothingsinto her willing ear ...Setting our kerosened expectancy on fire. You needed no introduction – those lines gave you away –your world of corner boys and sweet sixteens,Cruising the boardwalks in footsteps that echoedthe beat of Jersey summers ... Crossing the bridge to New York City at 4 a.m.,searching out the junk man, the woman, the railroad tracks.Ballads of Johns and Janes, the everyman’s fantasy,you drove us like a shepherd - we the flock -waving your staff like a flag on the virgin groundof the stage ...Your energy incited us, consumed us, tamed the wild and set the innocent free ...Threw fire on desire, ice on spite, cried out in pain like a hurt animal – pity thoseWho have not lived the life of the young as I have done.And coming down, we fell beneath you under that welcome weight of seductive, split-second silenceHushed, not mellow....And, as high voltage struck your high-wired framein one final bolt of lightning,You leapt from the stage, back to your time, back to the streetTo walk till daylight maybe.

When I heard you’d done yourself in, I was on my way to a guitar lesson. At the time, I was in love with the closest thing I could get to you:he was somewhere between boy and man and we tore our apartment apart in the name of love.

Listen, we weren’t just carbon copycats of you and Courtney—we fought harder and better—it’s just that with he and I no one but the neighbor was watching.

Before that, I used to live like a butterfly,like I was going to die in ten days.I’d wake up in train cars with older guys,my nail polish always chipped as we wandered around town giving every one the finger. Kurt,

when you pulled the trigger,and the shotgun blew a steel kiss into your brain,was it bliss? Did you finally see the world the way you and I knew it should be?Did you see with kaleidoscope eyes?The world shattering into a million colors to form a new kind of lie?

I could hardly stomach the news reports.They pronounced you dead in a 30 second edited piece,said you “took your life” when we all knew you blew your brains out. Kurt, you left us

open mouthed--baby birds waiting for food to come from someone who lies broken winged on the ground below. Okay,so it’s not the best metaphor but how dare you let your lips go blue; the rest of us dressed just like you and were content to die a little every day knowing we’d never make the national news.

And now you’ve gone, the way the river’s done,the way most of our daddies did. You left usalone in rooms with an MTV that couldn’t wait to pull the wool back over our brains, spoon feeding us a steady diet of lullabiesuntil we all got sleepy and waved goodbye.

We still got up for school,and now we go to work, strung out on an hourly wage so we can turn up the heat and make the lights go, wonderingif this is what our parents meant when they said “Grow up.”

Though the new young pine for you and open their wallets for shirts with your face on them, Kurt, I’m not impressed. Now you’re just another sarcophagus; another grown man we thought we could trust.

You would be surprised to knowhow many times Bernie snuck into your bed.How many notes he played inside your head. You,

looking in broad daylight with a Flashlight might beable to coax him out and ask him … Are you happy?Is that a song? Then he would reply … “Are you dancing?”

Like some allegorical apocalypse - his fingers compose.Cause when he whispers in god’s ear, god whispers back.The man’s connected, you know what I mean. Beethoven rolls over and utters only two words …. “Teach me.”

A voice drifting over the 8 trackThe window rolled down of my brother’s carThe music tenacious and saffron as bee’s waxWorn denim, wild curls, the rough and jumble of starsThe familiar cigarSongs tasting of Jim Beam.

Calm breezes, dark, clear skyFive miles visibilityA pilot’s unsteady eyeDisturbs the tranquilityOf a tree, precious lives, pecans Dive to the groundEntangled with a young man’s dream.

But the roller derby queensAnd the bad boys from townTake to the wind like seedlingsHe gave a name to the junkyard houndsTo Adrian James, his being-a father’s sound.

Does it have to be this way?All his seconds saved in bottlesCleansed by the sea, salt and wavesHis words Ingrid cocklesTo her breast, breathing inBreathing outAge.

If you tuned into BBC 2,On October 27, 1977,You expected to see the Alex Harvey Band;But two weeks short of breaking upThey had canceled that morning.

Management was so desperate to find an act to fill in,They took a band they had never heard of,From Australia,On their first tour of England.Playing bars for beer money.

So last minute was this decision,the notes on who he was introducingwere handed to the hostafter the cameras were already rolling.The syllables came out awkward“And now… AC/DC…”

Before he was even finished,Angus came running out.Tethered to the earth only by the cord of his guitar.Playing so hard and fast his hat flew off!He seemed to be terrified,In a frenzy,Like wrestling a wild animal...Afraid he might lose control of it.The sounds that came forth were surprisingComing from a man dressed as a schoolboyWith a guitar that was practically bigger than him...

Then came Bon.Godzilla tall,City-crushing dominant,Banshee certain,Wearing only denim and boots.Bare-chested,Covered in genuine jailhouse tattoos,and in jeans so tight,You could see... his secret... weapon.

And when he opened his mouth,It was all the snakes of Eden,The brimstone of banishment.Like the country he was born to,The music that molded him,The prison he had just been released from.He didn’t hit notes,He pummeled them,Bulldozed the scales,A sonic punch to the heart,This was rock!

For the first ten minutes,The cameras never showed the audience.They sat post-mortem still,Wide-eyed like a bunch of headlight deerBefore... truck grill impact.

See, the problem wasPeople were still hip-deep in a decade of hangover disco,Steely Dan boring,We needed an adrenaline WAKE-UP call!A little hair of the dogThat had bit the entire world twenty years before...It was time for some rock.

This was a bandThat looked like they robbed a seven-eleven on the way over.If you weren’t gonna lend them your earThey’d steal it!Prison break sexy,This was dark like blues,angry like punk,Honest like Amadeus,Avalanching onto an audience stiff with pretension,Those people left bone-brokenfull of street fight fallout.

These guys were gonna rockWhether you wanted it or not.

Steady like a juggernaut,Tsunami aggressive,Frankenstein frightening,Lassoed lightning!A Blitzkrieg reminderOf the rock the world had forgotten!

So run for your bomb shelters, London!Because if you sit still any longerThere are no guaranteesThe power on stage...Won’t kill you.

The astral world of intentions does a slow dance around my heart, reminding me of everyone i’ve ever danced withto the never ending tune of “It aint me babe”The resonance of Laurie Andersons voice, penetrates my body, whisperinghey..is anybody home? The magnitude of Patricia’s love for Mother meera makes me wonder Who..oooo is loving me.. The pink of Krista’s heart,floods my soul with God,while the universal lightshow simultaneously displays itself. The elf of my mind appears as if she understands,as i spin off to territory i am compelled to remember. Recordings of linear time inculcate my destiny.Trails of trickster remains,fortify the mirror,while the glasscutter of truth is slicing the veils,exposing me to eternal considerations.

He wants to change. To become anything elseother than what his peers have convinced him he issurely a butterfly or a tadpole would comprehend.The frog becomes a prince; the ugly duckling a swan. And his motherno longer conjures her youthbecause of the grief it caused which is all the seaand the wind and the rain know then sayover and over again. No one is listening

really. Closing his eyes, though, her son is learningto hear pain expressed transforming the world his body is thanksto Jimi Hendrix whose "church music"surging does heal.This is the sound of health, spiritual and physical.Looking at the poster he thinks howbeautiful Hendrix was: the cheeks are Indian-high,the lips full; the little delicate moustache he could havesomeday but the afro he can't because he's white.

The French may be rightThat crazy, spazzy Jerry is a comic genius.But before Gallic ascension and seminar studies, Before all the academic stuff, there was his partner.His buddy Dino. Dean. From the beginning, Jerry worked it to win. Dean would let it be, take it free and easy, slip into song, make us sway. The moon--it was his pie, a big pizza pie.

Laid-back and lazed, he set the kid straight, cooled him down.Dean liked him, and we followed his lead, liked him too.Liked the pity-me whine, the laugh-as-bray, the gimme-grab for attention. Because of Dean. He suffered the fool.Gladly.

ol' Pete had a reel to reel tape recorder near his amp rig, on the floor. he switched it on, playing the synthesizer part he had created that runs thru the song. everybody played in unison.

Daltry was swinging his mic by holding its cable, in what looked like a 20 ft radius as the intro played on. at the last possible instant he jerked the cable when the mic was out over the audience and it flew back into his hand for his opening lines.

Townsend was dancing around, jumped up into the air during his windmill chording and landed, his right foot down thru the stage floor. he went down on one foot, his ass nearly to the floor pushing himself right back up thru the stage, never missing a lick. he stepped away from the hole and nodded to it with his shoulder, a little grin on his face saying, 'ain't nothin'.

Entwhistle stood like a statue the entire evening, playing the bass like it was a rhythm guitar.

Moon's drumming simply was not to be believed.

i went to the concert with two friends and left with your Mom. it was the night we got together. magic.

I think I secretly wanted to be the girlyou dreamed about as you stoodstaring at the phone numbersmeared on the tiled wallby the stalls in a basement jazz clubin Greenwich Village back when Monk or Mingus or Milescould have been standing beside youbetween sets dreaming of a number...

No one ever kneltbefore me. I made the band out to be somethingthey were not -- the bitter pillof moment-worship that what I worshiped sucked. At night I sleptin head gear. "Little Miss

Can't Be Wrong" on cassette on repeat. I taped it off the radio, DJ talking through the chorus. Cautious even at my most devoted, I never bought the album.

In school I was the last to finishthe mile. I slung my legs to the beat of the flash-in-the-pancorporate grungeI loved -- why is it we movemost enthusiastically towardsthat which is no good? My first concert:

on the lawn at Walnut Creek,1991, air thick with allergens and beer,a throng of people fist-pumping "Two Princes." I shared a blanketwith my older cousin just returnedfrom Europe. This was before he found religion, before the duality of God became a pressing question. I was thinking about rock, the story I would tell. In my slip dress over jeans I twirled to an excess of guitar, chanted Chris Barron!into cupped hands. I had arrived.

So many years appraisingthe now only to learnit was different then -- each song racketing me backto what stood before me so clearly, singly.

Here are TWO poems (both are in the form called a "Roundel")for the "Listener Challenge: Ode to a Teen Idol" Contest. I hope you enjoy both, but if I'm only allowed to submit ONE, then of course, please choose only ONE. Please note: the total lack of punctuation is deliberate. And thank you very much for a wonderful radio show!

A ROUNDEL FOR RAVI

As a dreaming young student pursuing in collegenew freedoms romantic and resonantI was fond of artistical mystical knowledgeas a dreaming young student

Kay Gardner's soft notes circling 'round were sentthen an Emerson Lake and Palmer voyageThe Doors (Huxley's book and the band is meant)

But profound in its eloquence and ancient knowledgewas Shankar's hypnotic devout intentwhich could carry me to a sublime inner vantageas a dreaming young student

To a party most swank I was invitedin New York City to honor an icon,an Italian whose passion was excitedby the industry that made him its scion.The art of film he cast international,but boasting was not a shoe he would try on.Dino De Laurentis stood before me,an elderly man, wizened and portly.

“This is a poet, Nino Provenzano,”was my introduction to De Laurentis.“Writes Sicilian and born Siciliano.”He scrutinized me like I’m his apprentice.“You are a poet? So let me hear a bit,here and now, be the poet compos mentis.So there on the spot, eight lines I recited.He listened and smiled, more than excited.

“Bella! my friend. Indeed that is poetry.But explain to me why you write in that tongue.Sicilian is grand. We know that from history.Why not scale Italian, or the English rung?If you desire fame that has legs near and far,choose the lingo where your praises can be sung.The secret is simple. It’s in the three Cs.Pay close attention and I’ll put you at ease.”

“The first C stands for cerebrum, or, the brain.My dear Nino, intellect is like a bird.Up it flies in search, an idea to gain.Not for twigs or worms, but for the perfect word.It is a fishing line dropped to the depths ofthe sea, pulling up the subconscious, I’ve heard.Remember, this first C stands for cerebrum,if an artist is what you wish to become.”

“The second C is for cori, which is: heart,a fountain shower of sensibility.The artist makes treasure and elevates art,if this C informs his creativity.Into the artist’s dough, he kneads sweet honeyand combines it with art’s serendipity.With a brain in your head, and heart in your chest,only then does pure art become manifest.”

“Now, what the third C stands for, my dear Ninois something that not everybody has got.Miraculous and divine,” exclaimed Dino.“So banish your shyness and give it a shot.Push your gift forward to its own destiny,recited or written, for that matters not.The art of poetry can smash through walls.This C is for cugghiuna, which is the balls.

“If I’m not mistaken,” I quickly replied,“all three of your Cs are elemental forall goals in life. Surely all three are applied.Balls and heart and brains are what we’re thankful for.”“No,” Dino cried, “you still don’t understand it.Two out of three, in business; that’s what’s called for.Big balls and big brains, yes man, that’s all you’ll need.Throw in the heart and you’ll never succeed.”

His notion left me stunned and disconcerted.This was contrary to everything I’d found.Subtracting heart, to me, just seemed perverted.“Don’t bullshit me,” I quipped. “You’re theory’s unsound.He who rolls up his sleeves and digs in to helpbrings eye-to-eye heart to pure giving unbound.”From what I know I’ll keep all three united.Leave out the heart and you’re simply benighted.

I'll close my eyes with a breathand allow myself to feel the closeness of this moment against my face.This time, I'll accept the pain as part of the wholeand with the hint of a smile on my lips,I'll let my mind free itself from the faithful and the hopelessas I dream of the day when my heart will be home.

A heart shaped stage. Bono onits point. God-dappled, blissed-out, shouting his song every motion a sun saluteopen, and reverberating.next to me my friend breaks open her shirt, the material a barrier unbearable.

Loud the music pushes at us and we swallow it, and it isbig. Cramming our livers back to our spines, inflating our lungs,holding court, a Buddha in our bellies.

Nowin our nun black suits with our business decisions,in scrubs, in uniforms, in robeswith our world on us

when the right notes humand our breath catchesall of an age we whisperis it Bono?

Barbra, Barbra, Barbra if I could sing like youIf I could look like you If I could be on Broadway, if I could be strangely beautiful and unique and so totally ME…I mean YOU… If I could be wonderful like youBut I’m only 16 and my hair is red and I live in nowhere new jersey usa and nobody thinks I’m special or talented, but sometimes I think I amIf just one person would really see me … I could almost

be like you, my own version of youYou are everything I dream of being some day but know I will never be

Thank you for being aliveFor letting me put my dreams in youFor being with me up in my room singing every song on every one of your albums and pretending to be Barbra. When I do that, it’s almost okay to be me.

It wasn’t music It was pure joyI didn’t realize just how precious it was until he was gone

The first time I heard the Dead after he diedAnd the new, very talented lead guitarist took his first soloGrief clutched my insidesI burst into tearsOverwhelmed by the realization that I would never hear Jerry live again

PearlI learned from you that pain and tenderness could coexistCould learn to love each other Could give birth to Art and LifeYour voice - the ragged edge between ache and beautyThat high school morning I was listening to “Mercedes Benz” while dressing for schoolNo accompaniment – just your voice strong and loudMy mother shouted “Stop singing and get dressed”A moment of joy for me

Because I Fell In Love With Pictures Made of Words...For Gabriel Garcia Marquez

You are a man of fire-I can feel the burn ofyour skin on my fingertipsas Iturn pages andwhen I crawl in and wrap myselfin your wordsthey seer into my skinflecking like ashes into my veins.I feed on your power, the infinite expanse of your steraming mind-and so I chase you throughjungles and over seaswith your voice callingin a low tone, a rich growlthat starts at my spine andcrackles along nerve wires -never burning me but -guiding mewith one hundred hands untilyou leave me breathless,full of your fire,awash in your words.

ROCK AND ROLL SHAMANSThe first time I noted the mechanics of itI was almost 35.Mick Jagger was doing itat Foxboro Stadium.Raising energy.Commanding Energy.Drumming it out of the woodand steelbeneath his pounding feet,And sending it out to usthrough his outstretched hand;through the bodiesof the crowd.

I’d felt it before then,of course.The Beatles stomped their feet,tapped them, actually,and I was one of the millionswho felt it.And there was Ray Charles

and Jim Morrisonand others I can’t recall.I didn’t have a name forwhat they were raisingin me.Nervous parents called it sex.

Rock and rollsexenergymagicI’ve felt them all.And today,watching the Fabulous Thunderbirds performin South Station,amid trains arriving & commuters departing,a lead singer bewitched me againas I stood in the back row.

I wonder about these rock & roll guysand groupie girls.Do they know what they’re invoking,and responding to?Do they recognize the ancient heartbeat of the Earth Mother?The throbbing drive of the Primal Father?They who answerwhenever a foot comes down hard,and then comes down again,and again,and then again.

By whatever name... It’s in the ground.It’s in the blood.It’s in the music.Our parents were right to be afraid.Like the superstitious nativesthey’d seen on TV,they were running from an eruptingvolcano.

This is not a poem that Brautigan would have writtenIt does not contain trout streams (It didn't, but now it does)It does however hold the memory of his books on display in the campus bookstore widow,B/W photos of he and different hers.And the titles!: In watermelon sugar?The pill versus the springhill mine disaster?And, my mother's favorite, "Revenge of the lawn"How you can hold an emotion and describe it as it writhes and changesin your hands into something that you can no longer definewas a Brautigan trick,so was brevity, which is whythis is not a poem that Brautigan would have written.

Silica Beads in a Dictionary: Define. This is a Poem. Don’t bore me.Define. This a poem.This as a poem man. And We all can argue all day whether it has merit of the:“Life out Loud Bluesman.” ;Tarantula, Splot;. Its web commandeered--of a silica beads which in line dew drops down--Can’t be changed. Surely....buuuuuut-- “If it is sticks it sticks it stays the same”Tulips;Stuffs and Cotton kingsBlossoms sends me/isn’t/--Stream of Consciousness Kerouac PrinceUrban Dictionary’s: Fame; Love; GenderOxford’s own Webster’s own: Might as well remain binary. Binary,Define Humans: (?) Humans stay simply so. ; But perish the thought only bluesy tombs--and panic of a true color. Of insepction.Sits a man. It’s Dylan. Man oh man don’t mind the steam or hunger pane--There is a train that has its fame it caboosed down the aphabet lines don’t shift don’t shift, lets the sparks fly coal is only an ideal that really promps it.--Tarantula splots. Its a web Commonly deared. Silicon...Silica.Don’t Call this a poem. Ryokan would say: “Who says my poems are poems?” Emerson if he were alive. Blake if he was alive. Cummings if he was alive. But who are you to judge now? Posterity agrees. Needs. Don’t bore me.Fine then. Find them. “Define this a poem.”

“If an artist is truly an artist, They’re only concerned with one thing; And that is to do the will of God.”

Must’ve been strange To have come up in such an era;Discharged from the Army early,There would be no Vietnam for Him, Though through his brother Frankie’s eyes, And the letters he would send, He would still see it.

It was there & then That Marvin started thinking Less about his erotic fantasies And more about the world around him!

“Horrible stories about the war” May do that to a person.

It’s perhaps for such reasons that,As a conscientious objector, Marvin once refused to pay his taxes.

Needless to say, the IRS did not take kindly…

Before his last days, Of music, He said he’d really only ever wanted one thing, And that was: “To hear a sad refrain…” (as if God, in all his mercy & loving glory, were calling his Long lost flock of memories home again)

When his father shot him dead,With the gun Marvin had bought as a gift just months earlier for him,His brother Frank, the War Vet., Was by his side and close at hand again.

Dr. Kavorkian hadn’t anything on Marvin, For, Reaching down to hear his beloved brother breathe his last breath,It seemed there was something he wanted to tell him…Said Marvin whispered in his ear“I couldn’t do it,”To Which Frankie interpretedThere could be no more encores.

He wanted out of this Life& I don’t blame him,For we’ve seen what’s gone on since;Yet, amid(st) all the pop,& all the glitz, & all the glamour & violence,I can still hear the lilting rhythm,And Marvin, in the distance,Softly singing:

To speak in shades of blue,in utterance an elegance, your death renewing life,your life inspiring life to live,to speak through paintings,paintings caught on film as film in movements,you thrash my mind,but beautifully,unwind my reason from my spine,redesign the way I see:loving others, loving myself,what is beauty, what is art. What is my mind made manifest in words?I’d say your verse.What shadow puppets scope the screensthat were not cast by the scenes that you first conveyed?I wrote before I saw you, true,spoke and drew as well,but never had my voice so clearly found such inspiration,found such fond company until I saw, until I heard yours.I am indebted. From Jubilee’s wrath and beauty,to Sebastiane’s less subtle charms, I find a new Caravaggio,who painting with the shadows, evokes a newfound life,and you invoking that dead master in your own work,I invoke you in mineand wish your spirit life in death,a gentle sleep, a bounty of laughs,sweet remembrances,and above all,content.

I don’t know why I bought your recordMaybe something that I readIt must have been in Rolling StoneThat’s all we had back thenA cripple from down in GeorgiaA sage with a guitarYour lyrics didn’t make much sense, But damn. They struck a chord. “When the bug hits, the time to scratch,”That line cuts through the yearsI thought I was Al Prufrock Afraid to talk to girls

I saw you once years laterHoisted from the floorThe system sucked The crowd was drunkYou sneered through every wordMy window smashed outside the clubCost a hundred bucks to fixMy girlfriend wished she’d skipped “So many ghosts out on the street”You sang those words that nightI figured your best days were behind youOr maybe that was me

When I queued you up the next timeIt was after that girlfriend leftYour new stuff mixed well with my drinkAs I sulked through summer’s endThere was a deeper sadness thereThan what there’d been before“I’ll never find my new life without you”Just seemed like the way things wereI got through it pretty quicklyOnce I made it past the fallI met my other half that winterThe same week you OD’d

It was forty-odd years agoToday when Julie Henry boughtThe band to play in her basement,Not The Band, but the band,The sergeant’s band that was certainThat it happened all the time,The band that picked us up And held us, the band that taught usIt was okay to laugh and singOut of tune — okay to be out there,To be honest out loud, to play The clown, the band we needed Like love. Do you need anybody?Lonely hearts need to flyWith or without diamondsOr looking glass ties.The sky is full of microdots,Super novas, synaptic explosions,And it’s getting better,So much better all the time.

I used to be an angry young man,But now I’m middle agedAnd getting by with a little helpTo repair the same old cracksThat have kept my mind wandering,Wondering where I will go.It really doesn’t matter where,The joy is in fixing the hole,Then quietly turning the back door keyAnd stepping outside to rideWaltzing horses with Mr. K.Guaranteeing a splendid night for allTo listen to sitar riffs and smokeFrom a water pipe — realize lifeGoes on within you and without youEven at sixty-four. Will you stillNeed me when I’m old and grayAs a military man taking tea,My lovely? Where would I be Without you metering my ears?

Maybe there really is nothingTo say. I guess that would be Okay, but how do we imagineThat, my friends? It’s getting very near the end now (and I’d love to turn you on) but I don’t read the news Or believe that luck has much to doWith making a grade. It’s rather Sad: the changing lights, the blown Minds, the wars. I’ve seen their faces,Watched the crowd turn away,Grab their coats and hats, smokeThemselves into a dream — now A memory — and I was thereWith a girl spinning a recordThat boomed across the universeOne simple message — goo-goo Ga-joob — the love you take Is equal to the love you make.

Growin up in Coney Island it was natural for us kids to go lookin for Woody’s ghost. With our lastSpalding confiscated, stick-ball was out of the question so we would chase him down Mermaid Avenue carrying something large and voluptuous.If you were luckyhe would invite you to belly up at the seaside counter to share a dozen littlenecks -Slurping back the oceans’ juice and then wipingit away with the back of our hands. smilin.But what made you

makeout under the boardwalk and chisel your names inside a heart, into that first snowand push your way onto the defunct Parachute Jump. Was it from that height you saw the times a changingThere, where you first felt the blowin in the wind

Someday, maybe, we could share a Camparifrom the same glass or any drink you chooseI don’t care. It sure would be nice to watch you smile and twitch your lip as something or someone sails across your mind as you take another sip.

So, try not to blame me for fallin in love.You too have done so as sure as the shore teases the tide.as the wind needs the airsome of us have things we just cannot spare.Things we just cannot hide.

Title is partly in reference to an answer Dylan gave to a reporter at aPress conference in Los Angeles, California (17 December 1965)

The broken ankle on the backOf the album coverAn epic leapAn epic fallA vaudeville clownish professional wrestlerDropping hints as subtle as aGlass of milk spilled on the floorBut oh the grinBut oh the sinIt may not be good, but goddamnIt's right

I’m waiting for the train in Vilnius my friend is hoping not the HIV Kaliningrad to St. Petersburg who do you know would just go into Russia like this on their own the U.S. is bombing the milošević out of Belgrade 1998it’s 1961 and I’m 10 years old to purify when you might say my mind playing tricks to erase whatever I think I know about who I am who I think I amlike those raku potters changing their names to make themselves new I don’t know what the Bay of Pigs means it sounds funny but every one who says it Bay of Pigs looks nervous everyone tells me when I step off the train in St. Petersburg if I know any other languages speak them I am totally enamored of Fidel in his uniform Fidel surrounded by cheering people Fidel in his beard smoking a cigar his brother’s name Rauuuuuulmy secret name is Rauuuuuula way of deflecting the chide of my vision from figment to mysticalbetween what I hear and what I’m listening tono one our age Craigor gift of vision from the other side speaking Sanskrit hoeing yams rousing thousands with my poetry from the balcony of the Hotel Theresato rise into my higher next self Del Shannon driving my heart dead-silly when I whywhywhywhy high-pitched like a girl

He sang to me whilst a babe With passion sung and warfare cameAn’ passed to sweet mother’s memory For that’s all how sound came to me So while my brain began to formHe gave my heart it’s melody

My father din’ gave my axe to me But ofcourse when I was a child of threeAnd I played to that, the fisher’s priceIt took and scorned but gave me lifeMy heart right then began to seeAnd there begins my memoryAs I stand in my living room Rockin’ out to my favorite tune

And so boys grow and I was slowBut soon my heart grew oldI sacrificed my hands, time’s sandTo play those strings away

And all for one man To whom I prayThe only God I e’er believed The subject, my ode today__________________________________

I wrote this a couple of days after Levon passed….when I heard Tracy K. Smith’s piece about Levon, about a week later, I didn’t want to post it here, but I think I should. So here goes….

If there is a Rock and Roll Heaven, and there certainly is, even if only in our hearts and souls, then I can only imagine Rick Danko and Richard Emmanuel playing music with their dear friend Levon on a Big Pink Cloud. And late at night, if you listen real hard, you can hear…..Music From Big Pink…..

My Eulogy for Levon:

You Old Dirt Farmer,You've been Released,You're movin' farther on up the road,Across that Great Divide,Up on Cripple Creek,In the Whispering Pines.... ... For you, Life was a Carnival,An Endless Highway,From Atlantic City to The Promised Land.

For us, you held our Rhythm,You Rocked Our World,You were a Faithful ServantNo matter what Shape you were in.We watched you Paint a Masterpiece,And Dance that Last Waltz.

You took us there, that Night They Drove Ole Dixie Down,You showed us just exactly Who you did Love.We reaped the King Harvest of your gifts,You Made a Difference to our lives.

Now it's time for you to sing that River Hymn,As we figure out, Where we do go from here,You can, Hang Up those Rock and Roll Shoes, Levon.You get some much deserved, Time To Kill now.You can, Cross that Wide RiverAnd play that, Sacred Harp with Daniel.You've gone on to, Kingdom Come.Ophelia will be waiting, When You Go Home.

Like the typhoon's rageThrew tree trunks in the storm,Fury flung from your thronePropelled the music along.

Your sticks are hammers of the godsIn good times, bad timesDriving rock and roll over the hills and far away,To the houses of the holy and beyond--Flooding the stage with sound when the levee breaks.

Yet you could tame that power as well:Gentle caress of the brush falling like the rainSong and lonesome blues beats counting all the yearsSince I've been loving--your art--your genius.

But the mystery of what is andWhat should never be in this world is that theBattle of evermore rages on, but the soldiers onlyHave their place in the light for a whileUntil they climb that long, lonesome stairway to heaven.

And whether I'm down by the seasideOr in the mountains of Kashmir,Feeling trampled under foot or Free as a feather in the wind, I'm just gratefulThat the song remains the same--And for that I say,Thank you.

Dear John LennonYou met a fanWho turned out With gun in handDear John LennonWe miss your vibeImagineYou would not surviveDear John LennonWe are at WarAgainst all oddsYou kicked that doorDear John LennonYour child survivedYoko OnoWas by his sideDear John LennonYour other kidreminds us that Your voice still livesDear John LennonWe are entrancedYour music made usCry and danceDear John LennonPlease rest in peaceyour real fans knowyour voice runs deepDear John LennonYour solo yearsHouse Husband daysAnd Beatle tearsDear John LennonThis poem is doneWe miss your smileOut in the SunDear John LennonWe hear your voiceReminding usWe have a choiceDear John LennonJust one more thingImaginationWas your dream

We stood side by sideWaiting, listeningAcross the room A girl yelled out“Frankie, I love you”The music startedWe faced each otherEmbracing as we moved to the musicAnd for the momentI was your FrankieAnd you, you were my gift from Venus.

..at first you appeared to be lost and dazed-In a world that is frantically scurrying, trying hard to harmonize itselfInto some semblance of, in tune….all the while, coming up flat

…but you are not the one lost, not the one hurrying against hope and time-Not you, with your “I get it”, half grin and dark, knowing eyes,You… some kind of Mark Twain, with a twang and a pick, chopping up chords,Laying down lines in a chaotic poetry…always just a half-turn off key

…you discovered long ago that there should not be, could not be, order-That was the melodious absurdity of life in this, “Big Ole Goofy World”,To codify all of this beautiful chaos would be like sweeping up a dirt road-All you get is dust and when it settles….a dirt road

…this planet’s job is to turn and rotate, mussing up any arrangement-We somehow got the idea that it was our job to straighten up the tousledYou learned that your job is to be, crazy and confused…..and make it rhyme

We stood side by sideWaiting, listeningAcross the room A girl yelled out“Frankie, I love you”The music startedWe faced each otherEmbracing as we moved to the musicAnd for the momentI was your FrankieAnd you, you were my gift from Venus.

Late 1975 my 17 year old angst high school time / prisonPunctured / skewed by patti smith and her “horses”Godmother of punk, fresh from nyc – Brooklyn sceneCBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City punk poetry sultry sexyAndrogyny“Jesus died for somebody’s sin, but not mine” the Initial refrain track oneI thought, what about Buddha?Other songs on vinyl played over and overSuch unique fusion of poems / songs / pre-rap flowStream of consciousness babbleAint it strange / rock ‘n roll nigger / birdland / break it upAmazing soulful sad deep insightfulWordsMusicLightBeing in that momentMy tiny bedroom at home with monkey earsKoss headphonesAll one visionElegie to patti

Down on Bass River. Left alone with a Trail of Tears and Longer Boats are Coming to Win Us They're Coming to Win Us. Oyster crackers for dinner and the Tonic water sucks but this was long before the days of sytrofoam sequella and orange fieldnotebooks and yet: the profile is taking shape.

His girlfriend is pregnant. Her mother is upset.When she gives birth, the child looks like semenor maybe a large seamonkey or a worm with a human head. The chickens are still convulsing.

Don't you know the man with unkemptfingernails is pulling all the levers? He sitsin a another galaxy's tower, making plansto entertain.

Or maybe it's just David Lynch, appearing in hisown film, the spitting image of Jesus.

There is a lady in the radiator. She is singingIn Heaven and only you can see her. She stepson your seamonkey children. If her cheekswere not testicles, she would look likeMarilyn Monroe. You are drawn to her, infatuated. She could be your mother.

Someone said that Stanley Kubrick used toplay Eraserhead on a loop; it was his favoritefilm. But did he know that it is also theBhagavad Gita?

Krishna, by now, has probably seen the film.He has to know that the stars can mate, explodeand burn like humans. His flute is broken, but women still bask in his blue-skinned glory.

We can sing: Prabhujee, dayaa karoManame aana baso. Or we can just say:Glory, hallelujah, amen.

But you have to listen!

You see, when your lever's been pulled, you must create something beautiful.

The first record was on Verve, a yellow label. Spun, it was a Black-eyed Susan in reverse.I bought it for the hit song,so I could chime in when you rang out: Bill!But when the refrain fadedI heard you, a New York girl,Who called herself, "woman."White as me, but you gave yourself the rightTo surrey, to moan, and to invent."Oh I hate my winsome lover, tell him I've had others at my breast."I blushed every time, but I also dreamed.In my gold hoop earrings and black turtleneck, alone on the A train,I was riding in your carriage, carrying your train, learning your rhythm andYour wild, high notes.You better hide your heart, you said,I never believed you.

In high school the only legal place to listen to decent music was art class. “I like David Bowie”, my friend Heidi opined to the teacher, Mr. Baldacci.

He laughed and said, “I don’t think he likes you back.” Straight guys, even the arty ones pretended they didn’t understand why all the girls loved David Bowie.

Our Moms would notice in his posters and album covers the glittery, slinky clothes and pale thin arms that aped a female fashion model’s. Mom would say, “He hardly looks like a man at all.” Mom’s type of man had a body and face like a side of beef. If she was still married that guy was part of the furniture stewing silently in front of the TV with a beer in his hand.

The boys in school were no better. In fifth or sixth grade some of them had been our friends. Their newfound pseudo-masculine veneer was a seventh or eighth-grade vintage at best. But already us girls had had our fill of boys shouting abuse from cars in parking lots. Our Moms would say, “That means they like you.”

David Bowie, skinny, skinny, pretty, pretty, was the type of boy other boys yelled shit at, the type of boy who would tell us years later that when he was a teenager he made a choice. “I thought if these guys were going to torment me anyway, I’d reeeeee-eee-ally give them a reason.” So he dressed more outrageously, acted more fey and used that persona as a form of judo against the world.

The boys in my school never had a clue: they were getting their asses kicked every time David Bowie was on the radio. In one verse his voice so low, it broke and in the next verse so high he could’ve been Diana Ross. Girls couldn’t resist singing along.

Of course David Bowie liked us. He was us. Heidi explained to Mr. Baldacci, “He’s bi.” David Bowie would later deny he was bisexual, put out some wildly successful, crappy music and acquire an ex-model wife with breast implants and a baby, but I prefer to remember him as the guy from the seventies—who fucked Mick Jagger.

Flipping through teen magazines I see the David Bowie I loved on every other page. His slender, hairless body reborn as Robert Pattinson’s. His ivory-girl complexion mapped onto the face of Justin Bieber. Straight guys still say, “I don’t get it.”

In a drag-king contest I despaired over the taste in music—and men—Jon Bon Jovi?! Fifty Cent?! Who wanted to be these guys when she could be a queen for a day? All those girls in the queer clubs with precisely cut, bleached-blonde hair wearing fashions and shoes out of GQ by way of Mars, the illegitimate daughters of David Bowie: hear my plea.

Bind your breasts. Wear a feather boa. Make sure to put on a functional dick. Because I don’t know if you’ll win or lose, but I can guarantee: you will get laid.

You just know he owns a pair of Bean duck boots, and he's cursed the same gray Massachusetts slush underfootthat the schoolbus splatted on your biology report in the cheap plastic binder.Oh, he didn't need to say so in so many words, no.The side of his guitar, burnished as his pate, sparked tinder under an old pile of hope.Lazy flames of ordinary, keen moments licked my memory, rose up rosy. Desire pummeled meand laid me down again white on chill spring moss amidst the crumbling ash.All this from my seat, in the shy stillness, sixth row, all this from the simple flex of the well-used muscles, his throat, his handssingers behind, fingers ahead, flux and flexSounds and fires dying as his booted feet left the stage.

TomAn unreformed bluesmansucks on a cigar as if in prayer,his pulpit shadows behind the curtain.It tastes of bourbon and bad nightsin the right part of town with the wrong girl, times toocheap to savor.He cradles a fifthlike it was his motherand hums with gravelly, demon intonation.His eyes look like rusted nailspounded into the creaky board of his face,lips twisted around the knot of his mouth.Somewhereguitar riffs spin off fingers. Stringstrying to reach his brocclied earsthrough a thick bar-roomand wolf ticket redemption.He listens to the strain,purity masked bysmokey despair, over loud appeasements.He pulls back wide, widewide full lipsto teethwhite as violence.He listens.To the fingers.To the strings.To the two dollar harlotsand half-a-beer drunkards.He listens,he sings.Voice drawn taughtover back alley balladsand half remembered quarrelsfrom last Spring.He sings,voice grown coldon black winter nightsand hard government charity.He sings,voice soundingof band saws and stable yards;fence posts and sheared fingers --

Some were in between 16 and 17; I could pretend to love the Stones, and the Beatles, just to fit in.At the age of sixteen,I lived for Barbra, Judy Garland, and the Supremes.In 1967,a boy that loved, singing “People who need People are the luckiest people in the world,”A boy that could mimic Judy singing,“Some where over the rainbow”A boy that loved the gowns, and glitter of being a Supreme.At the age of 16, this boy was a walking target for harassment.I had to pretend to love, the Stones and the Beatles, just to fit in.At the age of seventeen, The Doors arrived,Jim Morrison, that long beautiful hair,The tight brown leather pants, the fluffy shirts,Oh, that long floating hair, “Come on and light my fire”.This boy was in love.A rock star so feminine, so free of gender restrictions,“The End” quoting lines from William, Blake;Maybe I was fooling myself, I was fitting in, at the age of seventeen.“The Crystal Ship”.Oh, that long flowing hair, the beads, that hairless chestSo masculine, so feminine, The lack of gender restrictions,This girl found herself at the age if seventeen.This girl realized that she would never fit in. Janice Josephine Carney

On the Ticket:"With Cat Stevens"but the Cat was on the lambovershadowed by the moonMcKendree Spring performedwith soul piercing magnificencethe electric violinwailed through fire and rainCould Ian possibly top this?

Clad in leftoversfrom a 17th century goodwill sackMr. Anderson and his tullish crewstrode onto the small platforma scarce three feet from where we sat

Pointing toe to ceilingthen touching toe to kneehe bent backward bringing flute to lipsfor the next two hoursthis part of the universewas his

Morningside Heights: my theologian boyfriend away in Europesuggests we each subscribe to The New Republic "so that we have something to write about," dutifully I subscribe and read, I am after all an intellectual-walks-in-the-garden girl (as Stevie Smith would say)

Nothing in the magazine comes up in our letters, but I read it nonetheless and one day discover a diatribe against one so-called Murray the K this DJ who is the end of civilization as we know it, this doubletalking carny barker and his Chiffons, Shirelles, Ronettes, the Shangri-Las…

Which has made all the difference as Frost would sayOr may be it's that what has survived was that love, as Larkin (almost) said Or perhaps this is about how an intellectual-walks-in-the-garden-girlUnbeknownst to her soon-to-be-ex theologian boyfriend

Unbeknownst to her professors or her friends-at-the-timefound her rock-and-roll in Morningside Heights all alone and long ago and on her ownbecause someone told her not to

I had the privilege of seeing you last year at a small venue in St. LouisHow they got the best singer in the world to cometo a small venue in St. LouisI have no ideaMy daughter and I sat with a couple, strangers to usI warned my daughter that I would probably cryShe said, no kidding, because she already knewThe strangers thought it was sweetThey had never heard you beforeI told them they were in for a wonderful surpriseWhen you were introduced you walked right by usYou looked at me and said 'Good to see you'I said 'thank you' and felt kinda proudThat I was able to say anything at allThe strangers made comments about how I feel about youThey had no ideaThey thought I wanted to kiss youBecause I cried thru the entire showLike the little groupies watching Sinatra or the BeatlesBut I didn't and I don'tI just wanted to listenI wanted to be carried awayOn the waves of the tone of your voiceYour voice causes the most blissful perfect vibrations in my brainThey hit an emotional cortex that I didn't know was thereAnd the tears just stream down my faceTears of joy and sorrow all mixed togetherThank you, thank you, thank you

Observing his fast world, I felt painfully innocent.Lisa was sneaking out to make out with boys. I lagged.An "unauthorized" Zeppelin biography (hidden under a pile of schoolbooks)Widened my eyes. This was crazy. Thinking of him as a real person, orPicturing him naked, was not where I reveled.

Rather, I wanted to live inside his guitar,A sprite who would sweeten his soundAnd twinkle drowsily in the air around him.Each song forged a playworld of foreignness; the specterOf my very youth unfurled before me.

Down around Port Arthur the tumbleweed, that mobile diaspore,flings its seeds in a race with time, dying in a pool of rain or oil.And what they have is a lot of sky and oil tanks coddling crudeand girls in much more underwear than they wear way up North.Mining land is deeply scarred and raw, the gravel pits alien,like lunar landscapes or the bank where Charon plies his trade.The young ones necking in their cars, the ugly bars, showed youthe rocking road away from that stripped coastal town.

Somehow you made it, broke and battered, to the pounding stage.We heard you wailing, every labored breath a paean to the actof love; girls of thirteen squirming in their jeans, electrified,right there with you banging some bluesy guy with everythingyou got and more—ah, pour it out, Janis, tumbling diaspore.Flag down that glory train and belt it out with whiskey breathand the stash of speed that lovers said you didn’t need.

What can you do if there is simply more of you than the girdled townand the gridded streets allow? They didn’t claim you then or nowin that spectral year when every other page regaled us with the talesof players dying in their vomit pools, snatching from us justthat small bit more, goading us to play your albums louder sothe bass reverbed and shook the angry neighbor’s floor.Play on, beauty, ravaged, strands of rough hair in your mouth,the hot ecstatic winds of Monterey resounding like a dirge,rafting us across that river, to some bright, abiding shore.

The road is marked but there's no way to see;Cause I smashed out the headlights a long time ago.The mirror is turned to the trash on the seat;Now the bags and the bottles are all that I know.

Down and out in Green-witch village;Asleep on a bench in Washington Square.It was oh so important to fall from your grace,And drink from the dark at the top of your stair.

There's a man with a switchblade in his shirtHe's lounging and laughing at me;He gonna take me for all I am worth,He knows how little that might turn out to be.

It's the same old dance floor, the same old grind;My name in blood on his card tonight,He'll get what he's after but he'll never findThe key to the laughter that's lost in the light.

I know how to write and I know how to read,And I know how to fight and I know how to bleed,And all that will come in so handyWhen I meet that man who's waitin' for me.Waitin' for that moment after the fallOf worthless pride and a long-distance call.

When we hear the piperWe are so easily led;He wrote better songs when he was aliveBut sold more records when he was dead.

Young Friend, it’s true: I’m in love with a balding man from Omaha, Nebraska who can dance. And I mean D-A-N-C-E. I mean snappy pointed toes on smooth shiny floors. I mean Innovation. Discipline. Moxie. I mean Fred Astaire.

It’s been this way for me, this love, for at least forty years, especially now, at the holidays, when reruns of his movies appear like silvery ornaments dangling upon my television screen.

Young Friend, look: If you haven’t already seen a man tap-dancing on the ceiling or on its side walls, or with a twirling coat rack as his partner, turn on the MGM movie musical, "Royal Wedding".

If you haven’t already seen a cane rise into a man’s hand from off the ground, more than once, while that man is spinning and wearing a top hat and tails, which he disliked, give yourself a healthy 4 minute and 36 second shot of “Putting on the Ritz” now showing on YouTube.

Or if you haven’t already seen a tap-dancer performing a solo routine with honest-to-god firecrackers exploding at his feet, Netflix "Holiday Inn" right now.

I mean it. I am serious.

Because what I’m saying, what I really want you to know, is thatthere is a grace, a physicality, a timeless mark of precision out there in the history of our collective creative life whose name is Fred Astaire, and I don’t want you to miss out.

I don’t want you to say that just because he passed away many years before you were born that you haven’t actually seen his work lately, never even heard of him maybe, because that would be like saying there’s no blue in a white light, there’s no spin in a penny, there’re no airplanes, vaccines, computers, man landing on the moon, or anything else that You can think of that has made life more boundless to live, more stunningly beautiful, or more interesting to witness.

And I love Fred Astaire. There, I’ve said it again.

That’s why I’m standing here at his gravesite on this warm New Year’s Day. A day when he, a figure born in the late 19th Century, still remains a creative outlaw. A day when, surrounded by the sloping green landscape of Oakwood Memorial Park here in Chatsworth, California, I can stand before his headstone, with its uncommon inscription below me, and I can say to him directly and at last, “Thank you so much, Mr. Astaire,” until within this tiny spotlight enclosing our two separate lives, all becomes calm and all becomes bright, and the church bells in the distance ring.

Hermeto picks up phonesez comeon over nowhe don’t know you from a bar stoolbut he don’t care

Hermeto, he don’t care!he play music, he play Music, he play muzak.he play sax, he play phones, he play bones, he play sacks of boneshe play floots, he play rocks, he play pots, he play piggies in a boxhe don’t play stars cause he can’t reach that far(but if Jell-O had a tone, he’d play that too)

Hermeto he krazy, he make little paper boatsez it’ll sail you home‘cross the ocean blue

Hermeto, he kool, he take jazz from stage to seats, he leave seats to play the streets.pied-piper like into the Madrid nightAnd if the Guardia catch himhe'd make music with their hats If he could he'd leep the walls of Meccaand fill it with pizzazz.(give him a tail he'd play coconuts with macaques in the trees).

Hermeto he smarthe sey we all infloo-enzedBenny Hill by Ellie NessStravinsky by NehruBrazil by U.S.Chinee by Peroo-- but U.S. don’t always sey it’s true

Because I am a narcissistI don't remember facesbut the girl at the bear pits in Bernforty years on same the day I ate the plum from the market and wrecked my nightwith radio crackling incomprehensibly until Leonard Cohen saved my lifelooking at the late show through a semi-precious stone.I'm finally writing to thank him.

Through half a lifetime you taught meTo see my father through eyes of love,Not resentment, offered men a newMythos for being with each other,Restored the holiness of grandfathersTo the right hand of the Great Mother,Brought poets across oceans--Rilke,Machado, Rumi, Hafiz--gave theirWords your gifted energy of delightThat finally pierced our jaded hearts.

So when you came to read in the Poe room at the library and weAsked you to dinner, my dead poet Came out and would not shut up, So needy to drink of you that I forgotTo own my work and let him suck theLife poetic directly from your cells.

It was only later that I wept to realize I was living a drama like my mother’s When Margaret Mead came to lecture,Embarrassing us in the high school gymWith her cavernous need to be seen,Crashing over the border of madnessFrom where she would never return.

Floating home far too late, heedlessly Drunk from meeting the Great Man, His perennial Latino vest, his cumulus Of windswept hair, his flat nasal voice,I crept in the house to not wake the wife,Flipped on the bathroom light to brush, Was arrested by the face in the mirror, Someone I had forgotten, a man I would Need many more years to know again.

In the not quite spring of Minnesota March we stay up all night drinkingand watch low hanging haze drift across the silo broken sky.We wait as if some litany were almost on our tounguesand turn our thoughts to ancient hunters squatting heavy liddedaround their smoldering fire of wetly stubborn prairie grass.You stand behind us in this primal scene our prophet, mentor, poet friendand with fierce joy shout with us the resurection of our hopesas the sun's seed takes sprout and pushes firey tendrils into nightwhile creation shudders with the mystic pledgerevealed in dawn and new life bursts from sleeping Leaves of Grass.For Walt Whitman.

The poem that I just submitted has some very specific uses of space, italics, etc. that are central to the pacing and emphasis of the piece. I have no idea if any of that will be translated onto your site. You can compare my published version of the poem at www.SecondSightMusic.com/jesterpoem.htmlwith how it turned out on your site.

The two Jesters did not merely take the stage, they commanded it, Their energy swirling around them like rainbows refracting en masse.

When this couple from the South played— him the guitarist, her the vocalist,Their costumes appeared to change before our very eyes, seamlessly, from jester to juggler to jouster, from ventriloquist to contortionist to aerialist.Their eyes and mouth colluding to defy the exact location of the music at any given moment.

And their music was intriguing, brilliant, virtuosic. Embodying the motion that audiences crave, Music of The Spheres, and the movement of their bated breath. The same motion that reminded them of the sea, the birds, the primeval land creatures that haunted their childhood.

Then, the Master approached the stage, alone with his guitar,His countenance unassuming, as if he was about to merely entertain a friend.

When the Master from the North played, his costume also appeared to change before our very eyes, seamlessly, somewhere between a pilgrim and a dervish,With eyes like translucent pools which spoke of absolute concentration and divine witnessing.

His playing was Deep the quieter he played the louder it sounded. Still the faster he played the slower it felt. All-Knowing the more minor chords he chose, the brighter it became.

While his voice was Cool Warm Embracing

He embodied the state that his audience secretly longed for, Music of The Eternal, and the movement of Nature's glance.The same state that reminded them of seeing a wild animal at rest,Their breath suspended, not because it stopped, but because it moved slower than clouds thinking.

Is it possible that a cash registerCan become a piano?Or that a man could lean against a lampostLooking like he was about to set the world on fire?How could a garbage can become a drum,With a beat that sounds like Wagner doing a Midnight Serenade?

Almost like Kerouac inhabited a taxi driver,Wearing a red derby doing the watusi on a Saturday night.Stand away from the edge of the stage,Please do not try this at home;The man is a trained professionalHe studied under train tracks with locomotive breath.

If asked about his past,You are certain to get a different tale every time.It has a lot to do with loaded revolversHeld to the head of a passing engineer.

You cannot pinpoint the exact locationHis compass is a magnet with a mind all its own.He will rip your heart out with a tire ironPlaying it like a harp.One note dipped in melancholy woeThe next so harsh it makes your heart stop.

There's a pregnant lady in the vestibuleWearing a poka dot dress,She's there against her best wishes,Waiting for her baby to confess.

The sun never sets on a Shanghai summerYet I live on the darkness on the edge of town.Senoritas do not sit by my fire,And yet I dream of Wendy and Sandy from the Jersey shore.

I keep the place in the assembly line that held my father before meI keep the place in the assembly line that will hold my son after me.I have learned more English than the missionaries hoped.I have learned more English than the missionaries feared.

But like a river that don't know where it's flowing, I commit my soul to the tides of fate.

But when I close my eyes, the summer heat fades.And I dream of a magical land called Jersey, Where I walk along a boardwalk,Whatever that may be.

And I become the man of my Springsteen dream.

So although the sun may never set on a Shanghai summer.I do not fear the darkness on the edge of townFor I believe in the rising, as has been prophesisedAnd the promise of the hungry heart.

John, not his real name, the 23rdDid not say That you could be both fat and holy, That an institutional pillar should posses perspective, That an old man could change the world, That being right does not make everyone else wrong, That Love, even for the celibate, trumps Victory, That we can trust the Spirit incarnate in others.

At university six months later, my pal who handled luggage at Dorvaland spoke a druggy mumble of joual,both light and heavy as the leaderof a Gauloises cigarette left burningin an ashtray or a coffee cup oron the kitchen's scarred Formica floor,explained the greatest poet was le Kingdes Lizards. We hadn't heard how he'dadmired Sinatra's shark-toothed irony,but running nights the spring before -- when she'drefused to come to me, since I had lefther first -- I'd sung, "Don't you love her madly," tear-blind, sneering, forced to laugh, bereft.

Today is Caroline’s birthdayLittle girls gather She is one year closer to the fate they all shareSoon she can marry a boy with a good job in the mines If she is luckyIf she is not luckyWell,Let’s not talk about that now…..

Today is Caroline’s birthdayA movie is rented to put in the new VCR.A movie for kids, says the guy at the town’s only video store.The little girls are not so sure.One by one they drift away.

Except oneShe sees a manSinging and dancing in silver spangly stretchpantsCavorting with muppetsObviously Different from everything she’s ever known

And suddenly, she understandsThere is more for her out there than this little town can holdAnd adulthood is more than a rust-grey horizon

No one can blame you for walking away, he sings.

The movie is called The Labyrinth and David Bowie has shown her the way out.

He wasn't Crosby or Como or FrankBut was my king of song in the fiftiesWe didn't buy records in Ireland back thenWe stayed glued to the radio insteadRadio Eireann by day, Radio Luxembourg by nightThough as teens we'd not heard of hormones back thenHe stirred them in us by his singing"My Heart Cries for You"..."Truly, Truly Fair" "Chicka Boom" and dozens moreHit after hit he kept bringing(Ah--finally a rhyme)With the great Mitch Miller, his orchestra and chorusSwelling french horns to the forefrontAnd that guy, Guy Mitchell with his glorious baritoneBelting out "Singin' the Blues", "Cloud Lucky Seven", "Pretty Little Black Eyed Susie"...Now I've got "Heartaches By the Number" 'cos I just Wikipedia'd himAnd found that Al Cernik (Guy Mitchell's real name) passed in 1999My heart cries for him.

Why Instead of Begging My Mom for Extra Allowance Money so I Could Buy a Record Album I Should Have Declared Fatwa on the Electric Light Orchestra

I was in love with a girl.And I can say this with absolute certainty,as I was in eighth grade,and eight graders know what love is

in ways thatyou all grow out ofwith your big feet, bad skin, left at the pizza place and walking 4 miles so you don’t have to explain why you need to call someone for a ride,your first kisses, shocking tongue in your mouth, cheeks turned floodplain “experience.”I didn’t need experience.I had Saturday afternoon movies on channel 6,I had heart-in-fist dedications on Casey Kasam,I had first-run Love Boat still on TV,

so forget your coward jaded blissful first-hand knees-quaking love,I was in love with a girl

and she wouldn’t call me back.I had tried everything.

And by “Everything,” I meaneverything: I tried funny,awkward,self-deprecating,I tried uncoordinated, I tried brainy,I tried stories in class about Santa being hit by an airplane Night Before Christmas style (and on the nose of the plane arose such a clatter, the pilot knew at once Saint Nick was a splatter)everything.

Iwas in lovewith a girland the months were winding that love so tightit could slip and fly across the classroom andcrackagainst the blackboard, I

was in love with a girl and finally at the point,sitting on lion-print sheets,of admitting lovewas not enough,

that love!was not!enough!

to bend this universe as it needed to be bent.I was in love with a girland sighedand turned on my radioto WOW or Sweet 98 or whatever the hell it wasand they said “Hereis a new songby ELO,”

and there’s Jeff Lynne telling me “Hold on tightto your dreams,”even adding emphasis by rephrasing it in French: :Accroche-toi à ton rêve,”and, damn, Universe,you had me going,I almost gave up on love,on love!

In the hindsight of adulthood,

of thirty years unlearning what I learned that day,

of good dates, bad dates, eyelashes, bra straps,yelling “What do you want from me!” loud enough to be heard four apartments down,heart-shaped cards, roses and rings, fourteen small teddy bears (one for every month),poetry that said way too much about the goddamn moon,the disproportionate surprise of warm breath on the inner ear,that the ElectricLightOrchestra

maybe could have been a little more specific.That “Accroches-toi à ton rêve,” I never did look that up,maybe it only means “Never eat too many croutons,”that DJs are not waiting like archangelsto set the cosmos off their turntable wobble;

I didn’t know anything about you all until I was two years’ shy of sixty-four.(Doesn’t seem possible, I know.)Just in time, I guess, listening only because it was two-thousand-eightAnd I couldn’t bear the debates any more where candidates on the same side used words to spit at each other.

My friend gave me a CD and said “Try this.” So for hours back and forth to work in archives,I listened to nothing else, hating it at first and then becoming caught in it.Was it true? “The love you take is equal to the love you make”? Why did that line prompt tears? Who was loving? Who was not? Who was lost?

So I told my friend that I needed more information And for the next few years I listened only to the same two hundred songs.And then, like everyone else (who knew?), I needed to understand The End. And I figured I would find the answer in a book, so I started reading And for the next few years I read only books that tried to explain it, And not one made sense.

So I started to think on it before I fell asleep – and on almost nothing else. (That was good, actually. The other things were impossible to fall asleep on.)I came up with this: Existential, almost inexpressible, loneliness; jealousy of that light; fury at desertion; betrayal upon betrayal. Desperate loss. Contempt finally too much to bear.

So in the end – words and music to spit at each other. Is what’s true about love also true about sorrow?

Searching for my youth through poetry and songAt least I don’t stop trying so how can I be wrong?

To engineer ones life like chapters in a bookwould surely be convenient, except no one would look

So I commend your frankness and merely stand in awereaching the conclusion that you’ve broken every law

And choosing to present yourself as a scholar and a kingI submerge myself in wisdom, drowning as I sing

Though clarity is something that I’m seldom guilty ofUnderstanding others is a talent that I love

Now presented are the reasons that I became a fanproclaimed to all around me, the philosophy of DAN

So let em’ talk and let em’ yell and even criticizedon’t knock it till you’ve seen it thorough someone else’s eyes….

Chet Joseph

This poem was written in tribute to Dan Bern, a not so main stream musician from LA, not long after I was exposed to his music through the magic of radio, National Public Radio that is.I have sent this poem to Dan before but I thought I might submit it to Studio 360 so you all could enjoy it as well. The original copy hangs in a frame with signed letters from Dan himself in my game room…

I see her standing thereTwelve, bangs freshly snippedagainst her will, eyebrows with a vastexpanse of hormonal foreheadAngry.Her father with Bob Haldeman’sflat-top and square black glassescould not fathom the Fab Four,Piles of cards-the friendlucky enough to own all fourbobble-heads.

John, Paul, George and Ringo?You were the Men for whomI stood on folding chairsIn Detroit’s Olympia.A strobe light concert Usurped by screamsA girl jumped from the balconynear John.Imagine…you were that good?

Not really,until Yesterday and Eleanor Rigby,do I know that even parentswho knew world warand Sinatra mightfinally admit thatMusic, and the Word born in Liverpool couldjustify radical haircut just a wee bit longer.

She was nice, and she was nice, and she was nice, and I'm not gay, but the real love of my life was David Bowie and the music he made with Mick Ronson and more, the stuff from MAN OF WORDS, MAN OF MUSIC, which many know as the re-released SPACE ODDITY album, all the way to ALADDIN SANE, about when I might as well have cried along with all the other fans at Bowie's stunning concert announcement that "not only is it the last show of the tour, but it's the last show we'll ever do," and YOUNG AMERICANS might as well have been as tragic for me as Dylan going electric was to the folkies, except I'm right even if I am a jerk about it. The music would never again, for me at least, reach the height or depth of Ziggy Stardust, and thank you David for holding out with him as long as you did.

She was nice, and she was nice, and she was nice, and I'm not gay, but David Bowie on record makes me never want to die, I just want to listen to my bootleg Bowie as "Wild-Eyed Boy from Freecloud" segues into "All the Young Dudes" into "Oh You Pretty Things" and then more and more and more and more.

Around fifty odd years agothe world decided to poundit’s fists into its own hands.Fingers stretchedgripping microphones and crunching guitars. Gyratingfalsettos and baritones intoone melody giving birthto Vedder - The inheritor of the vinyl revolution. His hair, like a Chia Pet growsand sways and the mountainrange in his throat lullabiesthe PJ’d babies who mothers stay.Awake. He climbed the scaffolds to take a picture of the audienceas they rocked from The Bandstandto Broadband. Dexterous, punk troubadourwho’s happy days sing the Uke.Portable songs - spore anywhere.

while I listen to country music on headphones. She’s bent downlow so his eye makeup drips and skips down the back of her head.No moon tonight, the air a washrag, I am feverish. The dark soundscovering up her little growls. My shoes new to the foot, her beda jumble of sagging wire and little bounces. The dogs sleep juggernaut, all boulders in the deep grass. Outside, pink-necked boys shoveCamaros down Derby Avenue. Bowie’s face is a teleprompterflashing lyrics: Why can't we give love give love give love give lovea chance to whimper a hymn to the moon, I am no stranger to deep grass matted and sacred. Her lips are slippery, now the dewsettles between her eyes, she looks surprised, some dangermimicking the porch light. Only the sleeping dogs knowthe way up off the couch. And I could bob past themback into a dream running backward from the knocker's hammeror else give up. Let Bowie have his way. Watch her skinturn red. Hear the end of his song. Turn and stammer.

When does wise turn sad? When romantic melancholia depress? When nourishing fire’s ash drop with a vengenace? When love shed like? When the old dog too stiff to greet you at the door even if she hears you enter?

Is it cued by the short days? No wonder Ibsen frowned on the other hand. Will work suffice? How much happier really is Stallone? Well, then Beatty? Redford? Woody?

I trailed Woody Allen up Madison Avenue once. Block after block, I slowed to his footsteps. He talked with a woman oh twice his height. Way before Soon-Yi. Not Keaton,nor Mia of course. They parted the waves. In the wake, I watched millions tilt their eyes and try to watch with casualness where they went. Not one broke stride; we yielded Woody his vector. But at the plane of passage all turned for the denouement with their heads upon their shoulders and quickly back to each other to ask, rhetorically, “Do you know who that was?” or to say who that was. The sure only smiled. Others looked back. This city was Woody’s.

I watched Woody and the woman turn a block onto Fifth and into an apartment house.

It has taken me years to intrude with this, but my sadness makes me want to write that Woody lived with reverence.

They all think you're an Irish band, an Irishmanin floppy hat and velour coatfestooned with flags, rags, and ferryboats,scimitars and scarves.But I knew different, studied you I did,when you were a young man, and I was just a kid.

That was the river, this is the seafor pagans and righteous fellows, felled, and lyrics that deep within your heart dwellcame to life in my headphones nightly.Suddenly, at seventeen, empty pockets mattered not,for this wandering waterboy's vibrant wanderlust.

C'mon Mark, where'dja dig up all them bones?Those things you did with two bass strings and a little piece of glass. . .Easy, cool, rock solid - then you jumped in the deep end -Dana shined the light right through the waves you cast, and then. . .Your words tied it down; just kept it spinning round & round.Your words tied it down.

C'mon Mark, why'dja have to go so soon?Those things you did a time ago still reverberate for some. . .Easy, cool, rock solid - then you jumped in the deep end -Dana shined the light right through the waves you cast, and then. . . Your silence hit the ground; just crushed the night and brought it down.Your silence hit the ground.

- for Mark Sandman, lead singer and two-string slide bass player from the band Morphine who died onstage (like the rock star he will always be).

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